Home Contractor Accused of Taking Over $200K from Victims for No Work; Officials Offer Tips to Avoid Similar Scams
LAS VEGAS, NV – A Las Vegas home contractor is facing felony charges after he allegedly bilked numerous clients out of a combined total of over $200,000 in payments for remodeling work he never completed…and all with a license that had previously been suspended back in January, officials say.
Gabriel Adame – owner of Adame Handyman Services, AKA Adame Construction – was taken into custody by authorities last Wednesday following a disciplinary hearing with the Nevada State Contractors Board over funds he purportedly stole from clients for work he never bothered to finish.
Adame and his attorney had accepted multiple charges in February after complaints were filed against him by multiple homeowners, with some claiming that the contractor had left them with as much as $35,000 in uncompleted remodeling work.
At the hearing four months ago, the judge presiding over the complaints, Noah Addison, listened to the tales of five of Adame’s alleged victims, many of whom were very angry over what they said were his deceitful and criminal business dealings with them.
One Las Vegas homeowner, Emily Moon, when asked is she had anything to add about the accused, declined, saying that, “I don’t think I want those words on record.”
Director of Investigations for the Nevada State Contractors Board, Terry Wike, noted upon Adame’s arrest last week that his organization had been looking into the contractor’s activities for quite some time, and wanted to make sure that they had all of their ducks in a row before finally having the cuffs slapped on him.
The investigation took more than a year. We have recently filed five charges against Gabriel Adame for his acts in taking money from homeowners and not completing work,” he said. “There’s a variety of levels of uncompleted work. He would take a down payment, and he would not complete the work.”
Wike said that homeowners should be very cautious when looking to have remodeling work done on their homes, making sure that they use common sense when it comes to issuing down payments and to thoroughly vet any contractor before having dealings with them.
You can’t take a down payment in excess of $1,000 or 10 percent of the value of the contract, whichever is less. We were often seeing down payments of 50 percent of the price of the project,” he said. “Make sure all your contracts are in writing, and they include scheduled payments. That’s so the payments don’t get ahead of the work.”
Shelter Realty is a Real Estate and Property Management Company specializing in the areas of Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, NV. Feel free to give us a call at 702.376.7379 so we can answer any questions you may have.